Raspberry Pi now comes with double RAM at the same price

If you're on the waiting list for a Raspberry Pi—the $35 Linux computer based on the ARM system-on-a-chip architecture—there's a silver lining to being in the backlog. Starting today, the Model B Raspberry Pi will ship with 512 megabytes of RAM—double its original memory for the same price.

Foundation founder and trustee Eben Upton announced the upgrade on the Raspberry Pi blog today. He said there had been many requests from the community for a more expensive "Model C" Raspberry Pi. "This would be useful for people who want to use the Pi as a general-purpose computer, with multiple large applications running concurrently," he wrote. "[It] would enable some interesting embedded use cases (particularly using Java) which are slightly too heavyweight to fit comfortably in 256MB."

But rather the foundation wanted to stay within the Raspberry Pi's $35 price point. The organization worked with manufacturers RS Components and element14/Premier Farnell as well as the suppliers of the Pi's components to upgrade the existing Model B to 512 MB of RAM—ultimately preserving the $35 tag. All pending orders for the Model B are being filled with the upgrade.

You could say people who just got one on with old 256mb are hard done by, but really, I don't mind just buying another. $35 is a great price point.

Ordered mine July 17th. Just got confirmation that it shipped Saturday Oct 13th. I haven't received it yet. I wonder if it will be the 256 MB or 512 MB model... It will be frustrating if it is the 256 MB but for $35 I can't get that upset. I just got it for experimentation anyway.

I am thinking of buying one as a always on desktop linux box to convert my DVDs to h.264. I would use it via VNC mostly and i wouldn't care if it takes long to convert a movie since it doesn't slow down my regular PC and doesn't draw a lot of power. If I am missing something, please tell me though...

I am thinking of buying one as a always on desktop linux box to convert my DVDs to h.264. I would use it via VNC mostly and i wouldn't care if it takes long to convert a movie since it doesn't slow down my regular PC and doesn't draw a lot of power. If I am missing something, please tell me though...

A more powerful computer that goes to sleep may end up burning fewer kWh to convert the same movie (since it works faster and can go to sleep earlier). It all depends on the system's total cpu power to wall power efficiency.

Obviously, for $35 you're saving a ton of cash but if the choice was to run that or something else you already have running you may not save anything.

This is awesome, I love mine, and I love the fact they're improving later generations of the device (although, like all computing devices, I wish I would have waited for the better spec hardware -- but it's been like that since the PC Jr ).

I'd love for them to move to an a8 based cortex too for some Ubuntu love - but that'd no doubt increase the price beyond their goal. The distros that are being tailored for it have been progressing quite nicely

You could say people who just got one on with old 256mb are hard done by, but really, I don't mind just buying another. $35 is a great price point.

Yeah, my feeling as well. The 256MB model I have works fine for what I'm doing with it, and I'm fine picking up another to play with the upgrade.

Quote:

A more powerful computer that goes to sleep may end up burning fewer kWh to convert the same movie (since it works faster and can go to sleep earlier). It all depends on the system's total cpu power to wall power efficiency.

Obviously, for $35 you're saving a ton of cash but if the choice was to run that or something else you already have running you may not save anything.

It'd be interesting to look at where the sweet spot for power consumption versus encoding speed is on that. I will say that at 3.5W it's entirely possible the RPi comes out ahead. Depends how long it takes to actually convert.

You could say people who just got one on with old 256mb are hard done by, but really, I don't mind just buying another. $35 is a great price point.

Ordered mine July 17th. Just got confirmation that it shipped Saturday Oct 13th. I haven't received it yet. I wonder if it will be the 256 MB or 512 MB model... It will be frustrating if it is the 256 MB but for $35 I can't get that upset. I just got it for experimentation anyway.

Let me guess, Alliedelec/RS? I'm in pretty much the exact same boat (ordered a bit earlier, and got the notification slightly earlier). Last I checked, they were ignoring the people asking about the change and which they'd get, so I'm betting we'll end up with the old board, while people that ordered far after us from other retailers will get the new boards... at about the same time we get ours.

This news isn't anything but awesome. I've got a 256MB Model B and I ain't even mad. Doubling the RAM won't have much effect for the primary, intended purpose but will make it more suitable for all the other stuff people have been trying to cram this board into.

Yes, because when I think about interesting embedded use-cases for a mid-range video card with an integrated ARM microcontroller, my first thought is obviously Java...

Can't we just agree that Java is a reasonable language for implementing web/rpc services and quit trying to pretend that it's good for building client applications or embedded systems? We shouldn't be developing event-based systems in languages that don't have first-class functions. It's hard to imagine a language that is less suited to modeling control flow in event-based systems.

I'm eager for them to have their manufacturing beat the demand. If ele14/RS were really interested in the money, they'd step up production. It feels largely like the manufacturers just don't care about selling units.

While I think the Foundation is doing a fantastic thing, the 3+ months of waiting list time, and $17+ shipping/import fees put this price/hassle point dangerously close to some competitor sticks that are non-waitlist with better specs already for $75 (with free shipping in the US). Just my $0.02

You could say people who just got one on with old 256mb are hard done by, but really, I don't mind just buying another. $35 is a great price point.

Ordered mine July 17th. Just got confirmation that it shipped Saturday Oct 13th. I haven't received it yet. I wonder if it will be the 256 MB or 512 MB model... It will be frustrating if it is the 256 MB but for $35 I can't get that upset. I just got it for experimentation anyway.

Let me guess, Alliedelec/RS? I'm in pretty much the exact same boat (ordered a bit earlier, and got the notification slightly earlier). Last I checked, they were ignoring the people asking about the change and which they'd get, so I'm betting we'll end up with the old board, while people that ordered far after us from other retailers will get the new boards... at about the same time we get ours.

I ordered in late July and haven't seen anything yet. E-mails to Allied have gone unanswered yet they continue to spam me with their ads. I would seriously recommend avoiding Allied if you want a Pi. Try the Element 14 export site if you are in the US.

I ended up with two of the 256MB Pis, one from each distributor. Use for our school lab to give hands-on experience to students. I tell them that it's the same CPU as my old iPhone, but way better graphics.

I had intended on using Squeak as the programming curriculum, but the amazing things possible with Qt5 on the Pi has really wowed the students. Search for the "DevAamo Presentation Qt5 Raspberry Pi" on YouTube!

RS and Element aren't manufacturers, they are just the two sanctioned distributors for RPF. The boards are made under contract by Sony in the UK. Initially they were made in China but the foundation returned production to the UK.

I am hopefully ordering a B this week. Looking forward to a lot of challenging projects with it.

You could say people who just got one on with old 256mb are hard done by, but really, I don't mind just buying another. $35 is a great price point.

Ordered mine July 17th. Just got confirmation that it shipped Saturday Oct 13th. I haven't received it yet. I wonder if it will be the 256 MB or 512 MB model... It will be frustrating if it is the 256 MB but for $35 I can't get that upset. I just got it for experimentation anyway.

Let me guess, Alliedelec/RS? I'm in pretty much the exact same boat (ordered a bit earlier, and got the notification slightly earlier). Last I checked, they were ignoring the people asking about the change and which they'd get, so I'm betting we'll end up with the old board, while people that ordered far after us from other retailers will get the new boards... at about the same time we get ours.

I ordered in late July and haven't seen anything yet. E-mails to Allied have gone unanswered yet they continue to spam me with their ads. I would seriously recommend avoiding Allied if you want a Pi. Try the Element 14 export site if you are in the US.

Yep, Allied. Lots of spam, that's for sure. Got my pi today and its the 256 MB model. I'm a little disappointed but I like it well enough I'd still pay $35 for what I got. Pretty amazing its that small, that cheap and does so much. I just would have been very excited if I got the 512 MB model. I would have felt like the wait was somehow justified. Theoretically yours should be the 512 MB model. I'd be interested to know when you get yours and if in fact it's the bigger model.

Sean Gallagher / Sean is Ars Technica's IT Editor. A former Navy officer, systems administrator, and network systems integrator with 20 years of IT journalism experience, he lives and works in Baltimore, Maryland.